


Measuring Cups

by greebled



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: AGIWTF4HAM Cinematic Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Summer Camp, M/M, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:48:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26761630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greebled/pseuds/greebled
Summary: Since they made this plan here last year, to be each others’ pen pal hype men, to bust out of their closets and join the Scouts together, Caspar has trashed no fewer than six keyboards detailing his uphill battle. He’s infamous at the school library now. He’s only allowed to use the ones he’s abused already, so he had to end his last email with a mangled L0VE YU 2!!!!!!
Relationships: Caspar von Bergliez/Ashe Duran | Ashe Ubert
Comments: 6
Kudos: 27





	Measuring Cups

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shenyun5000](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shenyun5000/gifts).



_You think theyre gonna make you start over_  
 _You don’t wanna start over_ _  
_-Andrew Bird, “Measuring Cups”

There’s a half a brick missing between them. It’s just enough to make Ashe’s warbling and sobbing and slobbering warp all funny in the combined acoustics of their rooms. There’s not a yielding surface anywhere for either of them. It’s all metal and brick, tile and ceramic. 

He keeps trying out different ways of saying he’s sorry, but they catch in his throat. Caspar gets the idea, anyway.

“No, you’re not,” he groans. He’s sitting with his back to the wall, eyes squeezed shut. The back of his head thunks rhythmically against the unforgiving stone. Maybe if he keeps at it, it’ll begin to erode. Didn't matter which.

Sniffling and snorting did little to cover how exasperated Ashe was starting to get. “Cas, N-no, I, this is, this is bullshit. Wha’d’you _mean?_ I’m sorry!” The spark in him dwindled then, his next words whimpered. _“I’m sorry...”_

Before it went out completely, Caspar barked a reply, punctuated with a louder thud that made colors burst behind his eyelids: “Are not!”

It works, thank the Goddess, the resulting flare making Ashe punch the wall. “Shut up! Am so!!”

Now that Ashe is yelling, he knows he won’t scare him. “You are _not!"_ He hits it back, not caring at all about how his already-raw knuckles sang in protest. "You’re a Lion Scout now! That! That rules! Didn’t you want that? We’ve been planning this for _how_ long!?”

“But, but, but, but-!”

“Nuh-uh!"

"How do you know!?"

"Say it all, then! Say you’re sorry for being a Lion Scout! I dare ya!” He’s laughing, now, his hands pressed to his eyes. “I double dog dare ya!”

“Okay, I will!” A couple hoarse laughs, himself. “I hope you’re- You’re ready, ‘cause I’m gonna say it!”

Caspar flicks little brick bits at him through the little hole. “Yeah? Do it, then!”

Ashe pants, clears his throat. “I’m...”

For a moment, there’s nothing but the low hiss of a broken toilet continuously refilling its tank, and Ashe’s labored breathing. Caspar lets his hands rest knuckles-down on the cool floor.

Like a gorilla, he thinks.

Like how he actually is, he tries to convince himself, huge and strong and not _this._

To his credit, Ashe sure _sounds_ sorry when he finally heaves a sigh and admits: “Oh, you’re right! I’m not sorry at all.”

It stings, but Caspar can take it. He’s strong enough to hear it, and he’s strong enough to open his eyes. In the trick of the warm summer sunlight, he can almost imagine the tiles are orange instead of pink, but imagining being allowed to whizz anywhere but here is a harder feat than imagining being some kinda cool ape.

He looks down at himself instead, and busies himself with picking little pieces off the cheap iron-on camp logo off his baggy shirt. “Ha, told ya.”

Like trying to right himself after slipping on ice, Ashe continues quickly. “It’s just not fair! How can I be happy about this if you’re not here? It’s stupid! You should be here!”

“It’s- Yeah, it’s-” Caspar cuts him off. All of his muscles tense. Since they made this plan here last year, to be each others’ pen pal hype men, to bust out of their closets and join the Scouts together, Caspar has trashed no fewer than six keyboards detailing his uphill battle. He’s infamous at the school library now. He’s only allowed to use the ones he’s abused already, so he had to end his last email with a mangled _L0VE YU 2!!!!!!_

If he lets himself think about it, he’s going to cry. If he cries, he’s going to start believing people _aren’t_ stupid, and this stall is somewhere he was supposed to be all along. Instead he peels a satisfying stripe of vinyl off his shirt, a little yellow sunbeam.

“My dad says next year, though! Once, uh, he’s sure I’m sure. He’s… Getting used to it? I guess to him it came outta nowhere. He’s still, you know. _Mourning his daughter.”_ Saying it feels like scraping his tongue against his teeth in a futile attempt to get barf-bitter spit off it. 

Ashe’s reply, same as his emails, of “what does that even _mean?_ Goddess, I _hate_ him, I really do, I hate him,” does way more to get the taste out of his mouth.

Caspar isn’t at a point where he can bring himself to criticize his family yet, not consciously, but hearing Ashe do it in his place is soothing. Still. “ _C’mon_ , y’don’t even know him.”

Ashe groans something that might be a long, exhausted _don’t_ if it wasn’t so muffled by his knees.

The sunbeam is a little gummy ball between his fidgety fingers.

He goes for another.

In the pause that follows, the space becomes liminal. It was by sheer luck they were able to time being here at the same time now, that the mens’ and ladies’ rooms shared a wall, but there’s no good reception at Camp Magdred. Caspar doesn’t even have a phone. When they leave, they’re doomed to be on opposite sides of camp for a few weeks, and then back to an hour apart by car.

Caspar doesn’t know what to do, so he unclenches a fist so he can stick his fingers into the crack between them. It takes a moment for Ashe’s shuddering breaths to calm, for him to lay his own on top. They’re warm. He curls his own up to grab them and hold him there. It’s nice.

It’s in thinking about how unnatural it feels to be comfortable that Caspar breaks his silence. “They’re gonna start lookin’ for us.”

“Hold on, I’m- I have an idea. I’m thinking.” There’s an especially gnarly snort before he adds. “Pass me some toilet paper?”

Thankful to turn some of this inner scramble into something physical, Caspar grunts a “yeah, okay,” and finds his footing in a jerky fumble of limbs. He shoves the door to a stall open with both hands, hard enough for it to bang against the inside and bounce back at his shoulder. He paws a big loop of paper out over his other palm, going a bit overboard since he doesn’t know how to go anything but.

Ashe begins to speak, but is promptly cut off by Caspar stomping back and getting to work tamping his absurd bounty through the little opening between them.

“Jeez, Caspar!” Ashe laughs.

Caspar cackles. “What? You sounded _really_ sad!”

*

They stagger it so no one gets suspicious. Caspar goes first because he needs to kick something and there’s nothing in Camp Magdred’s Bathroom for Girls that wouldn’t break a bunch of toes. He kicks a tree and a fence and a leaf pile. It doesn’t _not_ help, but he wishes he could scream some more instead.

By the time he makes it back, the young ladies are sitting outside in a loose circle, rattling off introductions. He settles himself somewhere where there’s room and quickly busies himself ripping up the grass with both fists before he can wonder if he did it right.

This time last year, he and Ashe made eye contact and just knew something was up. He couldn’t describe it, but in that moment, seeing another boy who wasn’t who _was,_ even if no one else knew, made him feel like he wasn’t so alone anymore.

_(“Oh, there’s a word for that,” said Linhardt, who had a Tumblr.)_

This year, he wasn’t so lucky, so he just sat and ruined the turf and half-truthed his way through his questions when it was his turn. He told them a chunk of his name he could stand to hear, he said he was most excited about meeting friends, and he said he had pet dogs, he guessed. The activity moved on. He went back to mowing the grass.

That would work well enough for now, huh?

Instead of thinking about any of this, he’d think about dogs.

Caspar couldn’t say _he_ had dogs, because it wasn’t like he could get anywhere near these things. The whole truth was that Caspar’s _father_ had hunting hounds. They were mean and big and on-edge and ready at all times, ready for whenever he took them out to shoot quails or grouse or whatever other feathered thing made the mistake of letting their guards down on his property.

_“Do you like them?”_

_“Ehh...”_

They weren’t the kind of animal you could really _like_ , not like Linhardt’s family’s pack of a hundred little all-hair yapping things, and, well. Caspar oscillated back and forth on those, on whether or not he liked those, either.

 _“Wait, wait,_ how _many?”_

 _“Alright, alright, maybe like four. Or six. I dunno! They all look the same!” Caspar had made a little bread loaf sized motion with his hands. “They’re all white and only the eyes stick out! So weird! You can’t even see their_ legs!”

_“Are you sure they’re dogs?” Ashe had said, over his shoulder. He said it in that slow smiley way he used to say a lot of things before he figured out nothing he said could ever make Caspar like him less. “Just wondering.”_

_He’d ducked his head and cackled. “No, but it’s none of my business!” Since he was already going to get in trouble for being too loud and scaring all the animals they were supposed to be finding on this hike, he decided to also get yelled at for jabbing Ashe in the shoulder with another cool stick he picked up. “Lay off ‘em!”_

The uniting factor with these animals that were arguably the same species, is that neither of them would put up with that trick. You know, the one where you put a little treat on their nose and asked them to wait, and then they’d wait, and they wouldn’t eat it, even though snapping the biscuit out of your fingers would get them the same amount of biscuit in the end? Neither would do it.

Caspar wouldn’t, either.

The von Hevring creatures were too small to warrant needing to actually train them, and his dad’s beasties would just take your whole hand along with it if you tried. Obviously, Caspar would do the latter, given the opportunity. After all, he is this brutal, huge, un-mess-with-able thing.

Going through the motion of this first day at camp, the urge keeps rising in him to stop playing along. To just break the entire thing over his knee and run and see how far he can get. There’s no hands to bite, he has to tell himself, because the second he picks one there will be an endless supply.

He could take a big chunk out of his parents.

He could rip apart the counselors who knew him and had to have _seen_ him in the years before, but still plopped him way, way, way over here anyway.

He didn’t _want_ to want to snap any of Ashe’s fingers off for being luckier than him, but he did.

He didn’t want to think about how, that way, he’d have room in his acid-filled girl-monster belly to do the same for every stupid, supportive foster family member and camp counselor who welcomed Ashe into the Lion Scouts without batting an eye.

Caspar could be as angry and hurt as he wanted all alone on the other side of camp, but instead, all he was was _balancing_. Waiting. He was real bad at it, so it felt like more of a noun than a verb. He oozed from place to place along with the group, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake like the world’s smallest kaijou.

A little pile of snapped up branches was worth a thousand words. He pressed each little pointy spear into the dirt with his thumb, one by one, and he looked north, and he balanced the treat.

*

Night falls.

Caspar is READY.

Being still and agreeable all day has him feeling full of static like he’s shuffled across a carpet in his socks. Whether this ends in an explosion that ruins everything or carries him to victory is hazy. Fear leaks in around the edges of his electric determination. He redirects it, rehashes it into more jittery energy, and he dives for the most important cot in the world as soon as the cabin door opens.

He sits on the edge of it and leers around like a gargoyle, daring anyone to try explaining assigned beds to a gargoyle.

He’s ready for a fight.

He’s ready for a door to slam shut.

He’s so, so ready for this to be yet another false start that he doesn’t even notice he’s being quietly laughed at. She has to be about the same age as he is, but she’s tall and skinny and _pretty._ She carries herself in this grown-up way that makes him wonder if he’s only got the issue half-sorted, like he’s not in the wrong cabin so much as on the wrong _planet_.

And, she’s laughing at him, just a little.

“Hey, relax. If you wanted my spot, you could have just asked,” she teases.

“Er- I, um. Didn’t know who to ask.” Flustered, Caspar snarls his fingers into the ruffled chunk of hair stuck to his neck. All the extra he can’t quite fit into his baseball cap. “Sorry. I guess.”

It must not be a big deal, because no one’s paying much attention to them. This comes as a releif; Caspar can rarely gauge weather or not something is a big deal in places like this. Girls are tucking themselves in and bumbling around and getting things out of their bags. When the one he’s robbing approaches, she does so in a way that fits with the flow of it all.

“I guess I could forgive you,” she says, still with that disarming amusement.

She walks right up to him and bends down, keeping her hair out of the way by holding it to her chest. Even when he’s in situations where he has to look nice and wear it down, it doesn’t look like the brown wavies cascading over her shoulders. Not literally, but cohesively. Like it belonged to him.

She reaches for a piece of masking tape stuck to the frame and works up the corner with a fingernail. The handwriting is messy and upside-down, but he can see there’s a D involved. Before she gets it the rest of the way off, she gives him a curious look. “I could forgive you if you tell me why you need this cot so badly. How about that, tomboy?”

He had been so ready for this to be a grapple that his head is spinning. “It, ah… Um...” Was this a trap? Caspar could feel his palms getting sweaty around his fistfuls of sheet. “It- Last year, it was my friend’s bed. And this year, my friend isn’t here, and that sucks. So, I want it,” he scoffs at himself for getting all blushy over his own words. He mumbles the last bit, muddying an unavoidable pronoun best he can. “I guess I miss ‘um a lot.”

The change is instantaneous. The condescending twinkle to her expression doesn’t leave, but there’s a warmth all of a sudden, and an excitement that almost convinces him that she’s twelve, too. “That is so _cute!”_ she gasps, all hushed.

“Wha-? Cute!?” He crows. She hushes him, and he tries to comply, turning the volume down word by word until they’re matched. He’s no good at whispering, so he kind of hisses. “How’s that cute? People miss each other all the time!”

“Oh, honey,” she coos. Then, all rushed and even more private, she adds “Don’t worry. I’m _glad_ you're gay. I was worried I was the only one here who wasn't- You know.”

“Whoa, whoa,” Caspar objects, even as he’s shushed some more.

Internally, he wheeled on the math equation of what she had said and uncapped a red pen.

Ashe isn’t a girl, so: “You- I’m not-”

But neither is he, so: “Wait, but- Waait-”

And if you put that together, then: “Hoo, holy shit-”

She removes the tape with a swift yank, like a band aid.

“Crap!” Caspar slaps his palms on his scabby knees. “O-kay, you got me!”

*

The thing about patience, is that you had to _keep doing it._

Each passing moment, Caspar kicked himself for not paying attention. He’d been given a date, all those mornings ago, but it slipped through his fingers in favor of holding the more exciting parts. Was it the thirteenth? The fifteenth? The twenty-somethingth? It wasn’t like he could ask, so he had no choice but to continue filling his pockets with granola bars and being good.

At the very least, balancing was easier when he had a counterweight. Dorothea was a social butterfly, but she always seemed to make time to talk to him, in her own frustrating way. If he ever saw Ashe again, he’d have to apologize for letting her continue to think they lived in a lesbian mirror dimension, but he just couldn’t risk losing his outlet to talk about it all.

Not all by himself.

There were times where he wondered if their plan falling through would really be so bad. To say he was happy would be a stretch, but there were plenty of moments of it. Did it really matter if every random person he’d never talk to again knew what he was? Wasn’t this close enough?

Every night, before crawling into bed, before staring out the window until he couldn’t keep his eyes open, Caspar gave the piece of label tape stuck to the frame of his bed a little kick. He couldn't muster the courage to remove the little reminder that he didn't exist as Caspar outside his own head, but, If it lost its stickiness, it couldn’t be helped.

*

Coyotes yip and howl in the distance, doing coyote things.

He doesn’t know what "coyote things" entail, but during his nights of emotional on-call, he’s happy to eavesdrop. It would be nice if he was into books like Ashe was. Maybe then he’d be more creative, and he could have somewhere fantastic to go in these long, lonesome stretches between wakefulness and sleep. 

That’s where they complimented each other best; the ability to think ahead of a future they wanted, and the means to get them there.

In the distance, coyotes yip and howl and do coyote things.

Does he still have that means? 

In swaths of quiet, it sometimes occurs to him that it’s getting easier to balance, and the thought makes his blood hurt. He’s heard people in movies say things about being able to wait forever for something, but he doesn’t think he has it in him. 

The treat is so close he can't even see it. Sometimes, he doesn’t know if it was ever there to begin with.

His ears strain to hear the distant noise. 

He holds his breath to make it easier, taking himself out of the equation other than the beating of his heart.

He stays very still and it feels fucked up and alien. He stays very, very still and tries to focus on that feeling, that feeling of this being weird for him, so he can’t get lost in this obedience shit forever and ever.

His lungs burn and ache and beg him for air. It’s a lucky break he doesn’t listen, because if he had, he probably would have yelled when the window beside him popped open.

Instead, he splutters in a breath, and a warm palm is shoved against his yell hole before he can use it for anything.

Adjusted to the dark, but still in the dark, Caspar makes out odd details. There’s the contrast of dark badges on his tan vest, the looming shadow of an overstuffed backpack around him, and, most importantly, the widest grin he’s ever seen on another person. 

“Oh, I’m so glad it’s you!” whispers Ashe. 

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” vibrates Caspar, once he’s grabbed Ashe’s wrist and pulled his hand away. He sits up and leans out the window. “I had to fight a guy for this spot, you shoulda seen him!”

In the bunk above, a certain someone scoffs.

Ashe doesn’t have context for the noise, so he flicks his hand around to grab Caspar’s arm, and tugs. “Sshh… C’mon.” He lets go and steps back, to give him room.

The window is close to the ground, and wiggling out of it is no problem. His hiking boots hit the dirt, and his own pack, laden with a few days’ worth of snacks and some candy from home, settles on his shoulders. For the first time since last year, they can see each other eye to eye. All he can do is beam like an idiot, until Ashe breaks the spell with a “Do you have everything you need?”

It’s a swift, desperate motion, like the flick of a snout after an agonizing few seconds staying perfectly still. Caspar’s palms practically box either side of Ashe’s face and he pummels his lips once with his own.

By the time he’s processed what happened, Caspar is halfway across the yard, charging for the treeline. “Do now!” he calls back.

He vanishes into it, turning seamlessly into a series of actions to navigate the forest. Nameless and shapeless, nothing but movement. The only thing there to remind himself he’s human is the sound of Ashe dashing after him, the sound of his giggling and encouragement to hurry, hurry! 

For once, the reminder feels really, really, really good.

**Author's Note:**

> This was SUPPOSED to be a birthday gift for [Reuben](https://twitter.com/shenyun5000) before my state caught on fine, but it got dropped until its namesake's album's birthday jogged my memory. So!! Happy birthday to Reub and [whatever that thing is on the cover of Andrew Bird and the Mysterious Production of Eggs is](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/745521920585367564/761354020073766922/Untitled_Artwork.jpg?width=1194&height=672) and no one else! 
> 
> I based this off [Ashe and Caspar's backstory in one of our AGIWTF4HAM runs.](https://twitter.com/shenyun5000/status/1302445018288857090) It somehow turned into a challenge on how to put a character who's usually written as pretty one note into a complicated and frustrating situation he cant punch himself out of, while keeping him in character. you know, for fun!
> 
> thanks for reading! and a big thanks to sydney for giving it a quick look-over. [you can find me on twitter at @goofylionking](https://twitter.com/goofylionking)
> 
> update 10/9/2020  
> hello hello, i'm back with my usual post-post once-over. just some usual dialog de-clunking. i shuffled some stuff about in the first scene for better flow and clarified some stuff in the gargoyle scene that had been bothering me. thank you again for everyone whos read this ol thing! and! [there's fanart now!](https://twitter.com/shenyun5000/status/1311849925206966272) and and! [you can see some process stuff in its retweetable thread thing here!](https://twitter.com/goofylionking/status/1311837089093173248)
> 
> til next time!   
> -greebled GLK


End file.
